Round this man’s neck also were clasped the arms of a German officer when a week previously the French piou-piou went across the field of a battle—­one of the innumerable skirmishes—­which had been fought and won four days before another French retirement.  The young German had had both legs broken by a shell, and was wounded in other places.  He had strength enough to groan piteously, but when my friend lifted him up death was near to him.

“He was all rotten,” said the soldier, “and there came such a terrible stench from him that I nearly dropped him, and vomited as I carried him along.”

I learnt something of the psychology of the French soldier from this young infantryman with whom I travelled in a train full of wounded soon after that night in Lorraine, when the moon had looked down on the field of the dead and dying in which he lay with a broken leg.  He had passed through a great ordeal, so that his nerves were still torn and quivering, and I think he was afraid of going mad at the memory of the things he had seen and suffered, because he tried to compel himself to talk of trivial things, such as the beauty of the flowers growing on the railway banks and the different badges on English uniforms.  But suddenly he would go back to the tale of his fighting in Lorraine and resume a long and rapid monologue in which little pictures of horror flashed after each other as though his brain were a cinematograph recording some melodrama.  Queer bits of philosophy jerked out between this narrative.  “This war is only endurable because it is for a final peace in Europe.”  “Men will refuse to suffer these things again.  It is the end of militarism.”  “If I thought that a child of mine would have to go through all that I have suffered during these last weeks, I would strangle him in his cradle to save him from it.”

Sometimes he spoke of France with a kind of religion in his eyes.

“Of course, I am ready to die for France.  She can demand my life as a right.  I belong to her and she can do with me what she likes.  It’s my duty to fight in her defence, and although I tell you all the worst of war, monsieur, I do not mean that I am not glad to have done my part.  In a few weeks this wound of mine will be healed and I shall go back, for the sake of France, to that Hell again.  It is Hell, quand meme!”

He analysed his fears with simple candour and confessed that many times he had suffered most from imaginary terrors.  After the German retreat from Luneville, he was put on a chain of outposts linked up with the main French lines.  It was at night, and as he stood leaning on his rifle he saw black figures moving towards him.  He raised his rifle, and his finger trembled on the trigger.  At the first shot he would arouse the battalion nearest to him.  They were sleeping, but as men sleep who may be suddenly attacked.  They would fire without further question, and probably he would be the first to die from their